Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2: Mike.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3: As always, Bridget, thanks for having me. It's been a
Speaker 3: little wild, but we've been some news and I'm excited
Speaker 3: to hear all about it.
Speaker 1: That's right. So here's what y'all might have missed this
Speaker 1: week on the internet. And I'm excited to start with
Speaker 1: a little bit of great news. It's great news for
Speaker 1: our friends in the entertainment industry, but also I'll explain,
Speaker 1: while it's great news for all of us, after one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen very long days, making it the longest
Speaker 1: strike in Hollywood's history, the Screen Actors Guild American Federation
Speaker 1: of Television and Radio Artists otherwise known as sag AFTRA,
Speaker 1: has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture
Speaker 1: and Television Producers aka the Studios. So both sides have
Speaker 1: been pretty quiet about the particular and specifics of what's
Speaker 1: in this deal. But you know how on that episode
Speaker 1: of Real Housewives of New York when Leunn Mary's Tom
Speaker 1: and She's like, we got the yacht.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like that we got the yacht.
Speaker 1: Well we got Ai. That was the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought when I heard when I was like hearing whispers
Speaker 1: about the deal, I was like, we got the yacht,
Speaker 1: but we got AI. Well, we probably got AI. At
Speaker 1: least it seems like we got AI. So for folks
Speaker 1: who don't know, AI was rightfully a major sticking point
Speaker 1: in these negotiations. Here's how Wired reported it back in July.
Speaker 1: Studios claim that they offered a quote groundbreaking AI proposal
Speaker 1: that protects actors digital likeness. SAG was like, uh uh,
Speaker 1: we don't think so, and countered that proposal, stipulating that
Speaker 1: background performers per the proposal that studios that put forth
Speaker 1: could be scanned, paid for the day, and then turned
Speaker 1: into digital characters that studios could use for the rest
Speaker 1: of eternity. Now the studios dispute this, but knowing the studios,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds plausible. Keep listening. So the
Speaker 1: issue kind of went back and forth until last weekend,
Speaker 1: when SAG reviewed what the studios were calling their last
Speaker 1: best and final offer. SAG was like, I don't think
Speaker 1: so fast, what else you got? They rejected that offer claiming, quote,
Speaker 1: there are several essential items on which we still do
Speaker 1: not have an agreement, including AI. So this is really wild.
Speaker 1: A follow up story in The Hollywood Reporter revealed that
Speaker 1: the studios had issued a proposal that would allow them
Speaker 1: to pay for AI scans of some performers and then
Speaker 1: following those performers as death. It would allow studios to
Speaker 1: use scans without the consent of the estate or SAG.
Speaker 1: So SAG wanted compensation for reuse of those scans along
Speaker 1: with consent. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did. Who wouldn't
Speaker 1: want that incredibly basic respect for their labor protected, Like
Speaker 1: the fact that studios were proposing that even in death,
Speaker 1: some performers would have to have their likeness used without
Speaker 1: consent for the rest of time. That is such a
Speaker 1: wild proposal that I cannot believe studios would put it forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anything anything where you've got a contract that lasts
Speaker 3: for eternity for all of time, it's like a little
Speaker 3: bit of a red flag, especially when it's something like
Speaker 3: a likeness of an actor performing in a movie or
Speaker 3: a TV show or a video of some sort that
Speaker 3: is typically labor that a person gets paid for. If
Speaker 3: studios are able to do that with somebody's likeness after
Speaker 3: they're dead forever. That just feels like dark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty dark. I don't like the idea that
Speaker 1: you could that we're signing contracts that have stipulations that
Speaker 1: continue after we are dead, Like what is this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Right? And like I guess it's pretty common for
Speaker 3: contracts that govern intellectual property to last for eternity, and
Speaker 3: like that kind of makes sense because you're talking about
Speaker 3: some sort of work that exists, But it just feels
Speaker 3: so different when talking about labor or what would be
Speaker 3: labor if it were done by a living person, But
Speaker 3: it's like turning that living person into ip.
Speaker 1: It really reminds me of the episode that we did
Speaker 1: on the Whitney Houston Hologram m in Vegas. This hologram
Speaker 1: of Whitney Houston with the with the permission of her
Speaker 1: estate was doing a I guess a digital residency. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they call it when a hologram is
Speaker 1: doing a residency. It probably has some other name, but
Speaker 1: we'll use the word residency and essentially what it means
Speaker 1: when studios and executives get to make money off of
Speaker 1: somebody's digital likeness just forever. Like it's like the zombification
Speaker 1: of people having to work and make money for others
Speaker 1: in eternity. It's really creepy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, residency doesn't feel like the right word. Instantly feels
Speaker 3: like more the right word right, Like we're not talking
Speaker 3: about an artist, we're talking about an object exactly.
Speaker 1: So again we don't know specifically what is in this deal,
Speaker 1: but it's likely that SAD got at least some of
Speaker 1: the AI provisions that they were asking for. So this
Speaker 1: is huge and it really matters whether you're in entertainment
Speaker 1: or an actor or a writer or not. Back when
Speaker 1: the strike was first starting, writer Akila Hughes tweeted, not
Speaker 1: to be hyperbolic, but this WGA strike is the canary
Speaker 1: in the coal mine. If we don't stop this industry
Speaker 1: from insane automation and devaluing wages, that's a rep that's dystopia.
Speaker 1: Whatever your job is, they're going to get rid of
Speaker 1: you so they can buy more yachts and pollute the
Speaker 1: earth with more shit. This is the actual inflection point,
Speaker 1: and I completely agree. I remember that that sentiment really
Speaker 1: resonating with me. So to put all this in context,
Speaker 1: just this week, the Tech Venture capital firm Anderson Horowitz
Speaker 1: warned that billions of dollars of AI investments could be
Speaker 1: worth a whole lot less if the companies who are
Speaker 1: developing a technology are forced to pay for the copyrighted
Speaker 1: data that makes them work. Or to put it another way, yo,
Speaker 1: if we're not able to just steal from people to
Speaker 1: make this to all work, we won't be able to
Speaker 1: make the tons of money from AI like we were
Speaker 1: planning to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I agree with him. You know, it
Speaker 3: makes sense if you can't just outright steal and you
Speaker 3: have to pay for the stuff that you use. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's gonna really cut into your bottom line.
Speaker 1: I mean, theft is lucrative. That's why people do it. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, Like yeah, but they're
Speaker 1: just discovering this. It's like, yo, yo, if we're not
Speaker 1: able to steal, how are we going to make money?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Like, I love stuff, but I hate paying for it.
Speaker 3: This seems like a natural solution. I'll just take it,
Speaker 3: not pay for it.
Speaker 1: It's called innovating, Mike. See, this is why this is
Speaker 1: why we're not making the big tech dollars. It's called innovation.
Speaker 1: It's called disrupting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we gotta do some disrupting of ownership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, walk into a target and do a little disrupting.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not advocating you from target. Do not
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: No, the joke is that stealing is wrong.
Speaker 1: Okay. So to put this in conversation, Biden just put
Speaker 1: out that executive order on AI last week. Did you
Speaker 1: see that.
Speaker 3: I did. Yeah, I saw it. I read it. It
Speaker 3: was I thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: And it does seem like we're at this inflection point
Speaker 1: where everyone, perhaps except for the people who were poised
Speaker 1: to make money from AI, has kind of come to
Speaker 1: realize that a future where the wealthy get to exploit
Speaker 1: and steal from the rest of us to get wealthier
Speaker 1: with no oversight or no guardrails just is not it.
Speaker 1: So I think if actors were able to get the
Speaker 1: AI provisions that they were asking for, even some of
Speaker 1: those provisions, I think it is a good sign. I
Speaker 1: think it is going to be good for the rest
Speaker 1: of us because it draws a line in the sand
Speaker 1: that's like, no, you can't just exploit and steal and
Speaker 1: grift your way into fatter pockets. We will not allow it.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 3: It's not the future, not if we have anything to
Speaker 3: say about it.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there is a new Facebook whistleblower that we
Speaker 1: absolutely need to be talking about.
Speaker 3: New Facebook whistleblower just drupped.
Speaker 1: New Facebook whistleblower just dropped. It is ar Turno Bihar,
Speaker 1: a former Facebook engineering director from twenty nine to twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen who later worked as a consultant at Instagram from
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one. Bihar testified that top
Speaker 1: Facebook officials, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg, enemy of
Speaker 1: the show, Adam Mosari, the head of Instagram, they did
Speaker 1: not do enough to curb harm experience by their youngest
Speaker 1: users on the platform.
Speaker 3: Bridgie, I noticed you had a little extra venom in
Speaker 3: your voice for Adam MUSERI what's the story there? You
Speaker 3: had more for him than Zuckerberg?
Speaker 1: Even wait, have we not talked about this on the show.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's never come up why I hate him so much?
Speaker 1: Because I do hate him more than the others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think you've ever really gotten into it.
Speaker 3: I mean close listeners of the show will notice a
Speaker 3: pattern where you get a little extra edge in your
Speaker 3: voice when talking about him, But what exactly is a
Speaker 3: story bridget.
Speaker 1: Ooh so Adam Osari, it's so personal and stupid. He
Speaker 1: just rubs me the wrong way. I just get major
Speaker 1: bad vibes from him and me saying that about a
Speaker 1: tech leader, like a white guy tech leader, is really
Speaker 1: something I think with people like Mark Zuckerberg, nobody looks
Speaker 1: at Mark Zuckerberg and thinks this is somebody who is
Speaker 1: meaningfully interested in creating a better world. You look at
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg and you know what he's about, You know
Speaker 1: who he is, you know what he does. It's very clear.
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandberg, I feels a little different, but I don't
Speaker 1: think and Cheryl Sanberg we have like met, we've had conversation,
Speaker 1: well conversation singular, not plural, but again having met her,
Speaker 1: you meet her and you like, you know who she is,
Speaker 1: you know what she's about. A little bit more of
Speaker 1: a pr slick vibe than Zuckerberg, but it's very clear.
Speaker 1: Adam Mosseerri, I feel like it's doing a different thing
Speaker 1: where he is trying to convince us that he's this
Speaker 1: super quirky fun guy, like, oh, I'm wearing funky socks
Speaker 1: and a sweater and like, my ties got a print
Speaker 1: on it, and I'm wearing horned rimmed glasses. And he
Speaker 1: also does this thing where he is often obviously with intention,
Speaker 1: the face of announcements, and so if I follow him
Speaker 1: on Instagram at this point, it's like I do it
Speaker 1: for the show to get it, you know, whenever there's
Speaker 1: updates or whatever, like I need to like know them.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like a hate follower, where every time
Speaker 1: his face shows up, I'm like, Oh, what is this
Speaker 1: dork going to be trying to What is this hateful
Speaker 1: dork going to be trying to convince us is actually
Speaker 1: good for us while it actually harms people. And so Instagram,
Speaker 1: as spokes probably know, was its own app before Facebook
Speaker 1: thought it. It felt different, it felt good. Instagram essentially
Speaker 1: bought it and then turned it into this like marketplace
Speaker 1: for the pain of children apparently. And I just think
Speaker 1: that Adam Mosseerri is trying to leverage this like quirky,
Speaker 1: kind of non threatening, inoffensive, nice guy in the office
Speaker 1: persona where he shows his face with intention when he
Speaker 1: speaks to the public as a means to mask the
Speaker 1: fact that the app actually does incredible harm to children,
Speaker 1: is damaging children and that he's making money from it.
Speaker 1: You look at Mark Zuckerberg and you're like, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who's making money from the harm of children.
Speaker 1: No trouble believing that. Cheryl Sandberg again, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who is like buying pantsuits via
Speaker 1: the money that she made harmon kids. No trouble believing this.
Speaker 1: I feel like Adam Moseiri wants us to think something
Speaker 1: else when we look at him, and that's why I
Speaker 1: hate him so much. It's like a very like I'm
Speaker 1: sure people listening are like, wow, she really has strong
Speaker 1: feelings about this, But I do believe he is leveraging
Speaker 1: a persona of like quirky, non threatening guy in the
Speaker 1: office with like funky thoughts to mask harm that he
Speaker 1: is profiting from. That's just a fact. That's not me.
Speaker 1: That's not me speculating he profits from harm and of sentence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well, thanks for sharing your opinions about
Speaker 3: that hateful dork.
Speaker 1: I just feel like, if you're gonna have the audacity
Speaker 1: to profit from the harm of children, don't do it
Speaker 1: while wearing a funky sweater, like half the decency to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, of course I'm a hateful asshle Look
Speaker 1: how I'm dressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, put on some like skeletor like armor or something.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean yeah, So like why I hate
Speaker 1: him as really grounded and the fact that like his
Speaker 1: app harms kids, And that's exactly what Bihar is clarifying
Speaker 1: from the inside. So basically, Bahar testified to the subcommittee,
Speaker 1: and this comes after he published a bunch of leaked
Speaker 1: internal information, including emails from his time work at Facebook,
Speaker 1: to the Wall Street Journal. So his testimony basically confirms
Speaker 1: what we already know, right all the stuff I just
Speaker 1: said that Instagram was very aware that their product was
Speaker 1: harming very young people and did nothing to address it,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they prioritized time spent on platform as
Speaker 1: a key performance indicator. Bihar released a trove of emails
Speaker 1: showing exactly this. Something interesting about Bahar that really sets
Speaker 1: him apart from earlier Facebook whistleblowers let people like Francis Hougan,
Speaker 1: is that Bahar has a teenage daughter who, like a
Speaker 1: lot of teenage daughters, his daughter was fourteenth at the
Speaker 1: time uses Instagram. He saw that his own daughter was
Speaker 1: getting continually harassed, as were her friends who were the
Speaker 1: same age on Instagram, things like abusive, misogynistic comments and
Speaker 1: unsolicited graphic pictures. He says. It is testimony. I asked,
Speaker 1: why do boys keep doing that? His daughter replied, if
Speaker 1: the only thing that happens to them is they get blocked,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they so this understandably deeply upset, he decided
Speaker 1: to go back to work as a consultant at Facebook
Speaker 1: to genuinely try to help them fix this issue and
Speaker 1: to flag them to the top people. Here's a little
Speaker 1: bit of his testimony.
Speaker 4: She and her friends began having awful experiences, including repeated
Speaker 4: unwanted sexual advances harassment. She reported these incidents to the company,
Speaker 4: and it did nothing, in large part because of what
Speaker 4: I learned as her father. On October of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: I returned to Facebook, this time as a consultant with
Speaker 4: Instagram's well being team. We tried to set goals based
Speaker 4: on the experiences of teens themselves. Instead, the company wanted
Speaker 4: to focus on enforcing its own narrowly defined policies, regardless
Speaker 4: of whether that approach reduced the harm that teens were experiencing.
Speaker 4: I discovered that most of the tools were kids that
Speaker 4: we had put in place. During my earlier time Facebook
Speaker 4: had been removed, I observed new features being developed in
Speaker 4: response to public outcry, which were in reality kind of
Speaker 4: a placebo, a safety feature in name only to placate
Speaker 4: the praise and regulators. I say this because, rather than
Speaker 4: being based on user experienced data that were based on
Speaker 4: very deliberately narrow definitions of harm, the company was creating
Speaker 4: its own homework.
Speaker 1: Later, he makes clear something that I always kind of
Speaker 1: suspected was happening at Facebook. But it's good to hear
Speaker 1: validated from somebody who would know that Facebook does, indeed,
Speaker 1: in his opinion, have the tools and the information to
Speaker 1: make the platform safer for young people, but that it
Speaker 1: actively chooses not to do so. In an interview with BBC,
Speaker 1: he specifically said that Facebook should implement a button specifically
Speaker 1: for young users that allows them to flag specifically unwanted
Speaker 1: sexual advances. From firsthand knowledge working at Facebook, he says
Speaker 1: that doing this is completely easy and totally plausible, but
Speaker 1: he told BBC, I believe the reason that they're not
Speaker 1: doing this is because there's no transparency about the harms
Speaker 1: that teenagers are experiencing on Instagram. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: coming forward right now. This is my retirement from technology.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because Instagram already does have like a
Speaker 1: general report button, like if somebody sends you a harassing
Speaker 1: comment or a message, you can like generally report them.
Speaker 1: But Bihar says that when you look at what they
Speaker 1: know about how young people are actually using the platform,
Speaker 1: that general report button is just not cutting it. He says,
Speaker 1: research we did in twenty eleven shows that thirteen year
Speaker 1: olds are uncomfortable with the word report because they worry
Speaker 1: that themselves or somebody else is going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're a thirteen year old and you get an
Speaker 1: unwanted sexual advance. How uncomfortable that is, how intense the
Speaker 1: experience is, and there's nothing they can use to say, hey,
Speaker 1: can you please help me with this? If that button
Speaker 1: was available, then there will be data about who's initiating
Speaker 1: those contacts. So Horr is really like, we need to
Speaker 1: be setting our users up to give us more information
Speaker 1: about the things that are experiencing on the platform, and that.
Speaker 3: Will help makes sense. You know, as much as you
Speaker 3: hate MUSEI I read an article earlier today that was
Speaker 3: talking about some new court documents that had come out
Speaker 3: I think connected with this or timed to go with
Speaker 3: this hearing at the subcommittee, and the documents were pretty
Speaker 3: damning about a lot of conversations that happened between Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: and a lot of top executives at Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 3: including Adam Musseri, where the other executives were actually trying
Speaker 3: to convince Zuckerberg to put some safeguards and some tools
Speaker 3: into effect to protect young people, and it was Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: personally that shot them all down. I thought that was
Speaker 3: pretty interesting that they, you know, and I don't think
Speaker 3: they were acting out of genuine concern for young people,
Speaker 3: but they were concerned that this very that they were
Speaker 3: going to find themselves in this position a couple of
Speaker 3: years down the road of really being you know, sued
Speaker 3: and looked at heart by legislators and regulators about their
Speaker 3: lack of action. And I think that totally has come
Speaker 3: true here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something tells me that was probably a bit of
Speaker 1: a like do you ever use the phrase cover your ass?
Speaker 2: Move?
Speaker 3: Oh? Totally, it was entirely cover your ass, But you
Speaker 3: know what, sometimes you want people's asses to be covered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if that's the only like way that
Speaker 1: you're going to do the right thing is like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want this to be read and testimony in
Speaker 1: front of lawmakers one day, so let's maybe stop harming
Speaker 1: the kids. Yeah, I'll take it. If that's if that's
Speaker 1: the best we got, the best we can hope far
Speaker 1: from them, I'll take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. You know, I have no illusions that capitalists
Speaker 3: and corporations are acting, you know, in the in the
Speaker 3: public interest or to benefit society, right. They're acting in
Speaker 3: their own selfish, selfish interest.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's that's why they get fined when they do
Speaker 3: egregious stuff.
Speaker 1: I will say, though, this this thing about Zuckerberg personally
Speaker 1: being like, no, I don't think we're gonna do this,
Speaker 1: that does not surprise me. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many times Facebook has made some sort of like horrible
Speaker 1: policy decision that is really harmful and it turns out
Speaker 1: that it was Mark Zuckerberg personally intervening to to institute
Speaker 1: that policy. Alex Jones comes to mind that that Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg personally initiated a loophole to keep him on the
Speaker 1: platform even after he was banned, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise me that it's the very tippy tippy
Speaker 1: top that is allowing this kind of harm to continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Bahar's testimony has really reignited convert stations around legislation
Speaker 1: like the Kids Online Safety Act, which she might have cleaned.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to our other episodes, is not
Speaker 1: legislation that we're really that hopeful about. This legislation and
Speaker 1: other legislation that seeks to sort of reign in big
Speaker 1: tech as it pertains to harming kids has kind of
Speaker 1: stalled despite a lot of bipartisan support, and now lawmakers
Speaker 1: are blaming big tech lobbying and big tech money. It
Speaker 1: is an indictment of this body, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: that we have not acted. And we all know the
Speaker 1: reason why big tech is the biggest, most powerful lobby
Speaker 1: in the United States Congress. They successfully shut down every
Speaker 1: meaningful piece of legislation. Do you have any idea which
Speaker 1: lawmaker said that I'll give you a hint fist pumping
Speaker 1: during the insurrection?
Speaker 3: No really, Josh Holly, Yeah, that was a quote from
Speaker 3: Subcommittee ranking Member Josh Holly election denying insurrection supporting Josh Holly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I say that to say the kind of
Speaker 1: strange bedfellows that have found themselves united on this issue.
Speaker 1: And I think that is so interesting that people that
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I have my suspicion on those reasons,
Speaker 1: but this is an issue that is really uniting people
Speaker 1: across the aisle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to give Zuckerberg credit for that. He
Speaker 3: really unites people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people hate him so much that they're like, we
Speaker 1: gotta put our differences aside to take him down, or
Speaker 1: might do it in a way that ends up harming
Speaker 1: marginalized people, but like, that's how much we hate you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we might just talk about it a lot
Speaker 3: and not actually do anything. But don't worry. People are talking.
Speaker 3: It's so frustrating because on the one hand, yeah, it
Speaker 3: would be great to see bipartisan support to introduce some
Speaker 3: legislation that would do something serious and meaningful to help
Speaker 3: protect teenagers in particular, but really all of us from
Speaker 3: the abuses of social media platforms and tech companies in general.
Speaker 3: But the Kids Online Safety Act is not that totally.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking to yourself, gee, I haven't really
Speaker 1: heard a whistleblower Arturo Bihar, don't feel too bad because
Speaker 1: I hadn't really heard of him.
Speaker 2: Either.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd seen a few headlines, but I did
Speaker 1: not listen to his testimony, and I didn't know about
Speaker 1: his personal story and personal reasons for speaking up a
Speaker 1: move that he said is effectively knowingly ending his career
Speaker 1: in tech. And that's really one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I wanted to include him in this conversation today, because
Speaker 1: I don't think he's really getting the attention nor the
Speaker 1: seriousness that his testimony warrants. Think back to when Francis
Speaker 1: Haugan became a whistleblower. She was everywhere I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this, and Mike, you and I happened to be
Speaker 1: traveling together when Francis Hagen blew the whistle on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember, we were in
Speaker 1: the hotel bar and they had a TV and they
Speaker 1: were playing her sixty minutes interview on that TV in
Speaker 1: the hotel bar like it was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do remember that it was. It was surprising
Speaker 3: because hotel bars don't typically play sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: No, they don't.
Speaker 3: They doesn't like a news themed bar.
Speaker 1: No, although wouldn't that be fun? And so I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why Francis Hogan's testimony was everywhere,
Speaker 1: and she was being treated a little bit differently than
Speaker 1: whistleblowers like arturobahar Is that one. She was kind of
Speaker 1: billed as the Facebook whistleblower, even though there were other
Speaker 1: Facebook whistleblowers before her, women like Sophie Zong, who we
Speaker 1: interviewed on the show. We'll link to her episode in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Sophie spoke to this issue too, how
Speaker 1: when you present a certain way as a whistleblower, you
Speaker 1: will be more amplified and probably more supported, And if
Speaker 1: you're not able to present in that certain way because
Speaker 1: of your identity, you might be treated very differently. Sophie
Speaker 1: was sort of framed as this disgruntled, poor performing former
Speaker 1: employee of Facebook when she came forward as a whistle
Speaker 1: blow or about Facebook's arms. Hagen was treated very differently.
Speaker 1: And let's really keep it real, like Francis Hogan is
Speaker 1: a blonde, wealthy, conventionally attractive white lady. I don't say
Speaker 1: any of that to diminish her or her work or
Speaker 1: the courage that it took for her to come forward
Speaker 1: as a whistleblower. But our Turno Bihar is Latino and
Speaker 1: he's also coming at this from like a very specific position,
Speaker 1: that is of a parent, particularly a parent of a
Speaker 1: teenager of color. You know, when we talk about the
Speaker 1: impact of social media on young people on how parents
Speaker 1: can support those young people, more often than not we
Speaker 1: are talking about white young people. Yet research which is
Speaker 1: mostly done on white youth is taken to be universal
Speaker 1: for all youth, despite the fact that kids of color
Speaker 1: are actually having like very unique and specific experiences online.
Speaker 1: Researchers at the Youth Media and well Being Research Lab
Speaker 1: found that black and Latino fifth through ninth graders adopt
Speaker 1: social media at younger ages in their white peers, and
Speaker 1: despite having the highest reported access to the Internet and
Speaker 1: social media, Asian American youths still remain underrepresented and studies
Speaker 1: on digital media and their well being Asian Americans in
Speaker 1: later adolescents and early adulthood. So eighteen to twenty four
Speaker 1: year olds are more likely to be cyberabully than their
Speaker 1: white or Latino counterparts. They are also the least likely
Speaker 1: to report negative experiences on social media in order to
Speaker 1: avoid embarrassment and maintain a positive image to the outside world.
Speaker 1: So Bahar as this whistleblower, the parent of a Latino
Speaker 1: child and somebody who worked at Facebook is really filling
Speaker 1: this gap and helping us understand this issue and how
Speaker 1: it impacts marginalized youth and their parents. And I just
Speaker 1: hope people listen, even if he's not a flashy, wealthy
Speaker 1: white blonde woman with like a slick pr machine backing
Speaker 1: her up.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of harm to use online, let's talk about omegle.
Speaker 1: Quick heads up that this is involving sexual abuse of miners.
Speaker 1: The platform o magle that instantaneously matched strangers with each
Speaker 1: other for video chats a la chat roulette shut down
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. So o'magle shutting down comes as part of
Speaker 1: a settling of a lawsuit that was started in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one where a plaintiff was matched with a man
Speaker 1: in his thirties through omagle. That man forced her to
Speaker 1: take naked photos and videos over a three year period,
Speaker 1: starting when she was eleven. Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who
Speaker 1: specializes in crimes involving tech facilitated abuse, who we've interviewed
Speaker 1: on the podcast before about section two thirty, we'll throw
Speaker 1: her episode in the show description. Was the attorney on
Speaker 1: the case. She told Wired, the permanent shutdown of omgle
Speaker 1: was a term negotiated between Omegle and our client in
Speaker 1: exchange for Omas getting to avoid the impending jury trial verdict.
Speaker 1: So I thought of omgole as like technology that was
Speaker 1: kind of of an era. It started back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, kind of fell off until the pandemic
Speaker 1: when it gave people isolating in their homes another way
Speaker 1: to use technology to connect with strangers and stave off loneliness.
Speaker 1: You would enter omagle and instantly be matched with a
Speaker 1: random person. You could click to be instantly rematched with
Speaker 1: somebody new, so as you could leave that conversation if
Speaker 1: you weren't feeling it and be connected with somebody else,
Speaker 1: but you could not go back to who you were
Speaker 1: just chatting with. So because of this instantaneous nature of omagel,
Speaker 1: you really could like sign on and find yourself looking
Speaker 1: at a stranger's genitals like instantly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Right, that's always the risk of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was when I saw this headline.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh yeah, omegol and I remember like
Speaker 1: playing with it a few times, and it kind of
Speaker 1: is like a cultural relic to a time where you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we didn't even realize how unusual it should be
Speaker 1: to be seeing a stranger doing something sexual online, whether
Speaker 1: we wanted to or not. Like when I first started
Speaker 1: reading about OMEKL shutting down, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: me and my friend saw so many men masturbating on
Speaker 1: that platform. And I almost caught myself like recalling this
Speaker 1: almost a bit fondly, until I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what like that actually wasn't okay? Like I think it
Speaker 1: is a relic of a time before. Maybe I'm always
Speaker 1: speaking for myself, but before it was clear how not
Speaker 1: okay that was, and how harmful that could be to people,
Speaker 1: and how risky that was, like you know, And it's
Speaker 1: funny because on Twitter, the conversation was very much like
Speaker 1: people remembering the same thing. Like I saw somebody be like, oh,
Speaker 1: shout out to all the thirty five year olds who
Speaker 1: like showed me their genitals when I was fourteen. I
Speaker 1: think we were all sort of thinking of this as
Speaker 1: a rite a passage on the internet and using technology
Speaker 1: and looking back, it's like, well, should we have been?
Speaker 1: Should that have been and write a passage?
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's almost like that was simpler time back when
Speaker 3: the idea of being randomly connected with a stranger on
Speaker 3: the Internet with video seemed like something that someone would want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so hold that thought, because that's going to be
Speaker 1: relevant and distimont so as y'all might have gleaned by now,
Speaker 1: omagle was a place where sex just really ran rampant
Speaker 1: like that was definitely my experience playing with Omagle. In
Speaker 1: a piece for Mashable, someone using the pseudonym Hannah called
Speaker 1: it quote a digital glory hole, and that is my
Speaker 1: recollection of it as well. Some of that sexuality on
Speaker 1: omagle was consensual, but a lot of it was not,
Speaker 1: you know, not all of the explicit stuff happening there
Speaker 1: was consensual. Abusers could, and it sounds like did, have
Speaker 1: a field day with that platform. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: there was one hundred and eight thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 1: one reports of child exploitation in Omegle. To the nonprofit
Speaker 1: the National Center for Michigan exploited children. Of all of
Speaker 1: the sites the center tracks, only Facebook, Google and thram
Speaker 1: and What's App ranked higher. Now platforms are generally protected
Speaker 1: by Section two thirty of the Communications Decency Act, which
Speaker 1: means that they cannot be held liable for what happens
Speaker 1: on their platforms, but the judge in this case found
Speaker 1: that omagle was at fault because the site's design is
Speaker 1: what allowed for miners to be sexually targeted, and thus
Speaker 1: omagle was not protected by Section two thirty. According to
Speaker 1: the BBC, Omagle had almost no moderation. The entire company
Speaker 1: was seemingly run solely by the founder, Leif Kbrooks, with
Speaker 1: no other registered employees. BBC said that it was operated
Speaker 1: from his lakeside house in Florida when he was either
Speaker 1: asleep or offline. No complaints were acted upon. If you
Speaker 1: go to omagle dot com right now instead of the site,
Speaker 1: what you will find is a long sort of goodbyepost
Speaker 1: from the found or leave K Brooks, in which he
Speaker 1: argues that shutting down the platform to him is kind
Speaker 1: of the end of an era of freedom online. We'll
Speaker 1: post the whole thing in the show notes, but here
Speaker 1: are a few key snippets. He writes, I launched Omegle
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen years old and still living with
Speaker 1: my parents. It was meant to build on the things
Speaker 1: I loved about the Internet while introducing a form of
Speaker 1: social spotaneity that I felt didn't exist anywhere else. If
Speaker 1: the Internet is a manifestation of the global village, o'magle
Speaker 1: was meant to be a way of strolling down a
Speaker 1: street in that village, striking up conversations with people that
Speaker 1: you run into along the way. Unfortunately, there are low lights.
Speaker 1: Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil,
Speaker 1: and that it's especially true of communication tools due to
Speaker 1: their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish
Speaker 1: your grandmother happy birthday, but it can also be used
Speaker 1: to call in a bomb threat. There can be no
Speaker 1: honest accounting of omeagle without acknowledging that some people misused it,
Speaker 1: including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes. To an extent, it
Speaker 1: is reasonable to question the policies and practices of any
Speaker 1: place where crime has occurred. I have always welcome to
Speaker 1: constructive feedback, and indeed omagle implemented a number of improvements
Speaker 1: based on such feedback over the years. Side note if
Speaker 1: you believe that BBC article, it does not sound like
Speaker 1: that was the case. However, the recent attacks have felt
Speaker 1: anything but constructive. The only way to please these people
Speaker 1: is to stop offering the service. Sometimes they say so
Speaker 1: explicitly and avowedly it can be inferred from their act
Speaker 1: of setting standards that are not humanly achievable. Either way,
Speaker 1: the net result is the same. Omagel is the direct
Speaker 1: target of these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you,
Speaker 1: all of you out there who have used or would
Speaker 1: use omagle to improve your lives and the lives of others.
Speaker 1: When they say omagel shouldn't exist, they are really saying
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't be allowed to use it, that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed to meet random new people online. That
Speaker 1: idea is anathema to the ideal's eyeshair, specifically to the
Speaker 1: bedrock principle of a free society that when restrictions are
Speaker 1: imposed to prevent crime, the burden of those restrictions must
Speaker 1: not be targeted at innocent victims or potential victims of crime.
Speaker 1: I've done my best to whether the attacks with the
Speaker 1: interest of Omegle's users and the broader principle. In my mind,
Speaker 1: if something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden,
Speaker 1: what's next That is far and away removed from anything
Speaker 1: that can be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle
Speaker 1: I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool but a physical
Speaker 1: world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime
Speaker 1: occurs there, or perhaps more provocatively, destroying a universe because
Speaker 1: it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when
Speaker 1: we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot more to it that I'm only
Speaker 1: reading snippets. But it's complicated because in some ways I
Speaker 1: agree with him, right, Like, I do think that there
Speaker 1: is an era of freedom and promise coming to a
Speaker 1: close kind of what you were alluding to earlier, Mike,
Speaker 1: that like the era where we might have thought it
Speaker 1: was a pure net good to be randomly connected to
Speaker 1: random strangers from the comfort of our own home anonymously.
Speaker 1: And I I kind of in some ways I kind
Speaker 1: of see what he's getting at. But if that promise
Speaker 1: means just accepting and tolerating the harm of miners, it
Speaker 1: is not a promise worth keeping. Like I think that
Speaker 1: that's what he's missing, that if this platform that you've built,
Speaker 1: that you've imagined us this like great utopia, comes at
Speaker 1: the cost of the safety and wellbeing of kids, then
Speaker 1: it is not a utopia. That's not just something that
Speaker 1: we should just like laugh off or normalize as a
Speaker 1: right of passage for understanding how to have experiences online.
Speaker 1: It's not okay. And it sounds like that freedom that
Speaker 1: he's pointing to the cost of that freedom is harm
Speaker 1: at miners. And I don't think that is a cost
Speaker 1: that we are okay with. Maybe we hadn't realized what
Speaker 1: that truly cost us before and he's he yearns for
Speaker 1: that time, and I understand, but now we have a
Speaker 1: better understanding of the true cost of this like principled
Speaker 1: utopian internet that he's laying out. What do you think.
Speaker 3: I think the freedom that he's describing and you know,
Speaker 3: lamenting the loss of here is the freedom of a
Speaker 3: child who has no sense of the responsibility that comes
Speaker 3: with freedom. And I also think that he uses a
Speaker 3: lot of analogies to try to justify why it's okay
Speaker 3: for him to have built this platform that led to
Speaker 3: this child being sexually abused. You know, he made the
Speaker 3: analogy of a telephone. He's like, oh, you could use
Speaker 3: a telephone to call in a bomb threat. That's true,
Speaker 3: but the Internet fundamentally changes the scalability of harm, right, Like,
Speaker 3: one of the cool things about the Internet is that
Speaker 3: some eighteen year old guy can build an app or
Speaker 3: a web app or whatever it was, and you know,
Speaker 3: doesn't cost him a lot of money, doesn't cost him
Speaker 3: a lot of like server capacity to run, just serve
Speaker 3: it out of his garage and make it available to
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. That
Speaker 3: is super powerful and really cool. But it's also really dangerous, right,
Speaker 3: and he alludes to that, and there has to be
Speaker 3: some kind of responsibility when you build something that is
Speaker 3: affecting so many people, it changes the math. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: if if he built this tool and like a dozen
Speaker 3: of his friends were using it and one person got
Speaker 3: unintentionally harmed, that's not great and he should probably think
Speaker 3: about that. But that's different than you know, hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of people around the world using it. There's a
Speaker 3: responsibility there that is just nowhere in this lengthy letter
Speaker 3: that you read.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is something that is really downplayed in his
Speaker 1: like long thing is the ways that he just abdicated
Speaker 1: responsibility to keeping users safe. In the ruling, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why the judge said that he
Speaker 1: was not that the sub section two thirty did not
Speaker 1: apply is because the judge said he could have put
Speaker 1: some some safeguards in place so that adult abusers were
Speaker 1: not being connected to kids like that, Like the judge
Speaker 1: described how because of the like you know, functionality of Omegel,
Speaker 1: where you can just hit next until you get what
Speaker 1: you want, abusers essentially are just like shopping for people
Speaker 1: to abuse, and they can just be like, not what
Speaker 1: I'm looking for, not what I'm looking for, not what
Speaker 1: I'm looking for, and when I'm looking for, And so
Speaker 1: there's there just seems to be a lot of downplaying
Speaker 1: of his own responsibility in why this platform had to
Speaker 1: shut down.
Speaker 3: There's no acknowledgment that responsibility even exists.
Speaker 1: But I think that when he talks about the when
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I'm I'm I yearn for a different time,
Speaker 1: I think that what he is actually talking about is
Speaker 1: a time before we really understood what was at stake
Speaker 1: and the harm that could be caused. And it's almost
Speaker 1: like a kind of like good old days when people
Speaker 1: when people thought that non consensual images of genitalia being
Speaker 1: shown to a child wasn't a big deal. Like I
Speaker 1: think that he's like, I think that he's thinking about
Speaker 1: it a completely different way than we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right. I think he's yearning for
Speaker 3: the good old days, which were a time of ignorance
Speaker 3: before we had thought about any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And before we knew I think I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like this technology is been around for so long,
Speaker 1: but it really hasn't and we're only now starting to
Speaker 1: like truly grapple with the impact, I think in a
Speaker 1: real way, because it hasn't really been that long. And
Speaker 1: I think that he what he's saying is like, remember
Speaker 1: back before we understood the impact and like nobody cared
Speaker 1: and it was like better. I'm not so sure that
Speaker 1: it was better. I think that the plaintiff in this
Speaker 1: place would probably agree that it wasn't better. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I A lot of people are trading his goodbye letter
Speaker 1: around the internet as if it's a treatise on a
Speaker 1: better time, and I'm just I really would caution against that.
Speaker 1: I think that it is really fundamentally normalizing a time
Speaker 1: that really maybe wasn't so great for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel you. It's it just reminds me of
Speaker 3: like a sixteen year old reading Voltaire a little bit. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: like sixteen year old should read volt Tear and that's great.
Speaker 3: But and this particular example is kind of a tricky
Speaker 3: one because it sounds like maybe he wasn't monetizing this.
Speaker 3: Maybe he does. He was truly making it because he
Speaker 3: thought it was fun, and you know, I respect that,
Speaker 3: and I can see how it would be really sad
Speaker 3: for him to have to shut it down, especially in
Speaker 3: this Oh oh okay, they made money, I didn't know
Speaker 3: profiting off of it. Yeah, So that's also relevant and
Speaker 3: does not show up anywhere in his statement right that
Speaker 3: he's profiting on this. It's not like he's trying to
Speaker 3: foster human connection and serendipity to achieve greater understanding in
Speaker 3: an altruistic way. He's trying to make money off this,
Speaker 3: And that also changes the math on the responsibility one
Speaker 3: has to keep people safe when you're charging the money
Speaker 3: for what you're selling them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yet he gets to just talk about this
Speaker 1: like I just created this as a force for good
Speaker 1: in the world and to see what I wanted to
Speaker 1: see in the world. Like yeah, but also, you were
Speaker 1: making money from advertising, so like like like you can
Speaker 1: you you can write all the like high pollutant, poetic
Speaker 1: things that you want, but like, let's keep let's like
Speaker 1: not forget that and you have you then have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to not profit from the harm of young people
Speaker 1: when you are making money from a platform.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there was another path he could have taken, right,
Speaker 3: He could have gotten some moderation going. He could have
Speaker 3: built some kind of functionality too to allow blocking or
Speaker 3: any number of things other than just like pack it
Speaker 3: up and go home and complain, because uh, you know,
Speaker 3: he can't just do whatever he wants at any cost.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of packing it up and going home, a
Speaker 1: website that I wish she was not packing it up
Speaker 1: and going home, we have to give a major shout
Speaker 1: out to, and that is jezz Bell because Jezbel's parent company,
Speaker 1: go Media announced today the website is shutting down effective immediately.
Speaker 3: Boo.
Speaker 1: I know I was a big reader of jezz bell It.
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd be the person I am today
Speaker 1: if not for jezz bell. It has been around since
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, when it was founded by Anna
Speaker 1: Holmes to sort of be the like feminist alternative, although
Speaker 1: they did they intentionally did not use the word feminist
Speaker 1: when they were pitching it, but the feminist alternative to
Speaker 1: glossy airbrushed women's magazines like Glamour. Side note, I once
Speaker 1: met Anna Holmes at a party and she is a
Speaker 1: total fucking baller. Shout out to her. She is incredible.
Speaker 1: So the website was really something special in media, particularly
Speaker 1: in women's media. It came about at a time where
Speaker 1: the dominant understanding of like what women wanted from media
Speaker 1: was like polish and airbrushing and quizzes. On Jezebel's foray,
Speaker 1: they offered a ten thousand dollars bounty to anybody who
Speaker 1: sent in pre airbrush photos of a model that eventually
Speaker 1: became a glossy magazine cover photo. The winner was a
Speaker 1: photo of Faith Hill, unretouched for Red Book magazine. So
Speaker 1: this might sound silly, but it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that if you weren't there, if you didn't like, live
Speaker 1: through it. It is really hard to overstate the impact
Speaker 1: that Jezbell had on media culture and the way that
Speaker 1: content on the Internet exists, especially content for women, but
Speaker 1: content more broadly as well. Jezebel came up around the
Speaker 1: same time as Twitter, and in many ways, the Jezbel
Speaker 1: comment section was like the prototype for what Twitter would
Speaker 1: eventually become. Like their comment section was Oh God, like
Speaker 1: I used to spend a lot of time in their
Speaker 1: comment section. Jessbel was started as a spinoff to Gawker Media,
Speaker 1: but eventually surpassed its parent site Gawker in popularity and
Speaker 1: page views. In two thousand and eight, the Autawa Citizen
Speaker 1: had found that community based women's websites were with political
Speaker 1: sites as the Internet's fastest growing category, while also citing
Speaker 1: ad Ages research showing that women's Internet use was outpacing
Speaker 1: men's at that time. So Jessbel was really foundational to
Speaker 1: this era that really was like women are online, women
Speaker 1: are seeking content on the Internet, and we got to
Speaker 1: give women readers and audiences something they actually want. We
Speaker 1: absolutely would not have an entire generation of women's focused
Speaker 1: media if not for Jezbell. Sites that you know and
Speaker 1: love like Reductriss Exo, Jane, the Frisky, the Hairpin would
Speaker 1: not exist if not for Jessbell. You know, there really
Speaker 1: wasn't a place for this like voicy, zeitgeisty, snarky writing
Speaker 1: for women that also was like feminist and intersectional and
Speaker 1: explicitly political. Like hell, I don't even know if I'd
Speaker 1: been making this podcast right now if not for Jezzbell.
Speaker 1: I was a voracious reader of Jezbel. One of the
Speaker 1: first like serious pieces quote unquote that I ever got
Speaker 1: published was about being black in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Speaker 1: Was for Jetzbel, though Mike my first big byeline, and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably true for like an entire generation
Speaker 1: of media folks. Jessbell's parent company, GoMedia, which publishes Gizmoto
Speaker 1: and The Onion, recently was in some hot water for
Speaker 1: publishing a slew of AI generated pieces without input from
Speaker 1: human editors that contained lots of errors and just like
Speaker 1: flat out false information and ultimately we're just not good
Speaker 1: after this, they actually stuck by that choice publicly and
Speaker 1: said that they were going to keep publishing AI generated articles,
Speaker 1: saying it is absolutely a thing we want to do
Speaker 1: more of. That's from Meryl Brown, geo's editorial director. What's
Speaker 1: worse is that, according to Daily Beast, it sounds like
Speaker 1: the layoffs were just like not handled in a great way.
Speaker 1: There was us meeting where staff was assured there would
Speaker 1: not be layoffs, only to later tell everybody that they
Speaker 1: would all be losing their jobs effective immediately shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the laidoff staffers squarely place the blame
Speaker 1: on senior leadership. We are devastated, though hardly surprised at
Speaker 1: Geomedia and Jim Spanfuller's ability to run our website and
Speaker 1: the cruel decision to shutter it. That's from the Writer's
Speaker 1: Guild of America East, which represents Geo Media staffers, adding
Speaker 1: in their statement quote, a well run company would have
Speaker 1: moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are
Speaker 1: shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude.
Speaker 1: Liz Lenz, who's been on the podcast before, tweeted Jezbel
Speaker 1: was a place where women could unabashedly write about culture,
Speaker 1: politics and everything with voice and humor and a whole
Speaker 1: range of human emotions. The fact that it was killed
Speaker 1: by anept men is truly a metaphor. So what's really
Speaker 1: resonating with me about how important this specific kind of
Speaker 1: work that Jessbell produced is at this moment is that,
Speaker 1: in addition to a lot of their like snarky, gossipy content,
Speaker 1: their reporters also publish some of the most in depth
Speaker 1: reported pieces on issues that impact women, from the elections
Speaker 1: in Virginia and Ohio to the Republican debate this last night,
Speaker 1: it could not be clear how important of a topic
Speaker 1: abortion is. Right now, there are just not a ton
Speaker 1: of places with really good, in depth reported pieces on
Speaker 1: the huge intersections of technology and abortion. For instance, Jess
Speaker 1: Bell was doing that work, but now there is one
Speaker 1: less place for it. A lot of folks were understandably
Speaker 1: wondering how a popular, well liked website like jez Bell
Speaker 1: just could not find a way to make it work
Speaker 1: and had to shut down. A piece in four h
Speaker 1: four Media written by Jason Kobler and Emmanuel Mayberg sheds
Speaker 1: a little bit of light into that. They actually suggest
Speaker 1: that jez Bell's in depth reporting about important topics and
Speaker 1: I was just describing might have actually been one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that led to jezz Bell closing. As I said,
Speaker 1: Jessbell did not shy away from tackling tough topics, things
Speaker 1: that we all need to know about, which understandably are
Speaker 1: sometimes heavy or complex. But because of the advertising model,
Speaker 1: brands were sometimes wary about their ads showing next to
Speaker 1: any content that might have been controversial. In quotes, Lauren Tosionnan,
Speaker 1: Jezbell's interim editor, and told four four Media that Jessbell
Speaker 1: was told that brand safety, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: advertisers don't want to be next to the kind of
Speaker 1: content that Jess Bell was publishing was one of the
Speaker 1: biggest factors that led to GEO to stop publishing the
Speaker 1: site and to lay off the whole staff. She adds
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks ago, the ad sales team
Speaker 1: even asked if the website could remove Jess Bell's tagline
Speaker 1: sex Celebrity, politics with Teeth from the site. She says
Speaker 1: they took it off because they're like, let's see if
Speaker 1: this makes a huge difference. So yeah, it was very
Speaker 1: much the problem here that no one would advertise on
Speaker 1: jez Bell because we cover sex and abortion. I know
Speaker 1: that taking the tagline off was to see if the
Speaker 1: algorithm advertising would change and if it was removed. One
Speaker 1: of the editorial directors was like, I'm seeing an ad
Speaker 1: for j Crew for the first time ever. Maybe this
Speaker 1: will be good, which led to the staff really wondering
Speaker 1: whether or not sticking with that particular advertising model to
Speaker 1: make money really made any sense at all. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's closing to me, like really signals the
Speaker 1: end of a certain kind of media climate and a
Speaker 1: beginning of something that frankly doesn't feel that great, and
Speaker 1: a really fascinating piece for The New Yorker. Anna Holmes,
Speaker 1: Jezebel's founder, looked back on what she built at jez
Speaker 1: Bell and the media legacy that it's leaving behind, writing
Speaker 1: I see jezz Bell not as the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of the digital media era, but as a moment
Speaker 1: a spark with an ongoing discussion about gender politics. That
Speaker 1: conversation has led to new realities around sexual assault and harassment, pay, inequity,
Speaker 1: and cultural depictions of women. It also makes some people uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: in part because it involves women expressing their anger in
Speaker 1: public and sustained ways. Every woman has a well stocked
Speaker 1: arsenal of anger Audrey Lord Road in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: which can act as a powerful source of energy serving
Speaker 1: progress in change. If that's part of Jezbel's legacy, I'll
Speaker 1: take it. It's about everything I could have hoped for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a sad one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rest in peace, jezz Bell. Like what a good
Speaker 1: fucking sight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you you're right, like of an era, really
Speaker 3: like it was a leading voice on the Internet. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't know it was voice isn't the right word,
Speaker 3: but uh, it was like an important outlet on the
Speaker 3: Internet for years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also think it just like we wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that content on the Internet would look
Speaker 1: the same with that Without jezz beelt like it changed things,
Speaker 1: Like it was famously satirized on thirty Rock. It was
Speaker 1: like angrywomen dot com or something like that. Like when
Speaker 1: like Liz says, Liz makes a joke on on TGS
Speaker 1: and a Jezbel parody website is like flaming her for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it just really caught. It was like lightning
Speaker 1: in a bottle. It really caught something special. Obviously, kind
Speaker 1: of going back to the conversation we were just happening.
Speaker 1: It wasn't without its faults, like some if you were
Speaker 1: around for those Jezbel days, you probably remember some of
Speaker 1: the wild conversations that happened there and some of the
Speaker 1: wild antics of some of the folks that worked there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was it was of an era.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's a certain Internet snarkiness that I really
Speaker 3: associate with feminism, and I think like Jezebel is probably
Speaker 3: part of that. You know, we'll just have to keep reading.
Speaker 3: One cat over at Substack, I know our fix.
Speaker 1: Anna Merlin, who used to work at jez Bell now
Speaker 1: works at Vice, where ironically they also had layoffs. Today
Speaker 1: she was talking about how like our current media climate
Speaker 1: feels like it's just a handful of legacy publications that
Speaker 1: cannot possibly cover everything that needs to be covered to
Speaker 1: the depth that it needs to ai generated garbage, and
Speaker 1: you know, independent newsletters or substacks, and it's like, is
Speaker 1: this our media climate?
Speaker 3: Is this?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: Is this in this time where there is so much
Speaker 1: going on, there's so much important stuff that we should
Speaker 1: they be checked in on. Is this the media climate
Speaker 1: that we have to help us way through it?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 1: I hope not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because it connects with something else that
Speaker 3: I think we've talked about on the past and in
Speaker 3: the past, and probably we'll be talking about again the
Speaker 3: shift in social media platforms like Facebook away from news.
Speaker 3: Like there was a solid decade maybe longer, where news
Speaker 3: content was like the main content that people were posting
Speaker 3: and commenting on on platforms, and that's like explicitly no
Speaker 3: longer the case, right, Facebook is moving away from it.
Speaker 3: In places like Canada, they've banned it entirely, and I
Speaker 3: have to imagine that that is very much connected with
Speaker 3: this phenomenon that you were just talking about of our
Speaker 3: media ecosystem being a handful of legacy outlets and all
Speaker 3: of the you know, I don't know, alt journalism or
Speaker 3: what would have been alt weeklies thirty years ago, are
Speaker 3: I don't know less less abundant less. I'm sure they
Speaker 3: would love to have some extra money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know who got that money, don't You don't yet? Facebook,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg and fucking Adam Mosseerri. So thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm happy that you have more money in the funky
Speaker 1: sock budget and we local news is dead. Thanks, guys,
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. This all sounds very doom and gloom,
Speaker 1: but I mean, we have to choose hopefulness, like we
Speaker 1: have to choose. I do see hope in the way
Speaker 1: that people are saying, I don't fucking think so to
Speaker 1: a lot of these tech billionaires and a lot of
Speaker 1: the proposals that they lay out for how they intend
Speaker 1: to continue to get rich off of us, whether it
Speaker 1: is exploiting our likeness in prepartuity or forcing ads into
Speaker 1: more and more of real estate online. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there is reason for hope. We have to be
Speaker 1: hopeful that something better can be out there on the horizon. Mike,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here as.
Speaker 3: Always, thanks for having me, and thanks for listening.
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Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
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